Interpretations of Bingo
Monday, 29 April 2013
Bingo has existed for centuries as a fun, social gaming activity. However, there have been certain individuals over the years who have taken an interest in the game from a different angle, without actually playing the game. One example of this is Timothy Mooney, a Chicagoan showman who managed to incorporate the game into one of his performances. The purpose of this, in his case, was to use the format of random selection used in the game of bingo to provide a structure for his show. In another instance, Michael Hess took an interest in the documentation of the game from a photographic perspective, in which he recorded to evolution of the game over the years.
Shakespeare Bingo
Mooney’s show, Lot o’ Shakespeare featured a random concoction of excerpts from William Shakespeare’s works, picked from the playwright’s entire catalogue, including all of his 36 plays and 6 sonnets. The role that bingo played, in this instance, was that a cage filled with balls was used to randomly select the monologues that he was to perform.
What may seem surprising is that the bizarre idea was borne out of a logical thought process. A fan once approached Mooney and suggested that he try out for a role as Macbeth. Flattered, he contemplated the idea, thinking that he could probably muster together a steady career on-stage by journeying between the various regional Shakespeare’s festivals. To succeed in this manner, he thought, was to memorise a bank of snippets from the Bards work in preparation for any audition that may come his way.
As he began to memorise the various monologues, his focus moved away from his original idea of travelling between festivals, but instead towards figuring out a way of compiling all of the different pieces he had learnt. He considered a few approaches before arriving at his conception of Shakespeare Bingo.
Photographer Documents Bingo Halls
Michael Hess played bingo for the first time in his local hall in 2005, which began a four-year photography project resulting in the launch of the book ‘Bingo and Social Club’. Hess entered the converted-cinema bingo hall purely out of curiosity and being fascinated by the characters and environment, decided he would carry out a photographic industrial analysis. Hess was commissioned to compile a new project, requiring him to revisit some of the halls from his original book to document the game’s evolution.
This came about after he developed a relationship with a bingo website owner, who admired Hess’ work and wanted some new photographic content on his site. The newer project is not yet completed, but Hess is convinced that quite a change will be observed. When looking back at games just five years ago, you’ll see people smoking inside. Also, before the online industry began to thrive in the past few years, bingo halls were much busier, with a much livelier atmosphere.
It will be interesting to see the results and comparison when the more recent project is eventually completed.
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